How To Let Go Of All That Heaviness - Joe Hudson

Chris Williamson 0:00 I love everything that you do. I can't believe, I genuinely can't believe it took me as long as it did to find your work. It's Charlie Hooper from Charisma on Command that said you'd been a gateway drug for him-

Joe Hudson 0:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:12 ... to a bunch of other stuff. And, um, I get the sense you're kind of an underground hero in sort of the self-work world, who's now becoming, uh, increasingly less underground, um-

Joe Hudson 0:21 Yeah, because of you. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:23 (laughs) Yeah, and OpenAI. You're now the head of what at OpenAI?

Joe Hudson 0:25 Uh, no, not head. Um, I just, I'm working there maybe, like, 25 days this year. But I'm, um, working with the compute and research teams.

Chris Williamson 0:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 0:34 So basically the management of the, of the folks who are creating the technology.

Chris Williamson 0:39 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 0:40 It's, uh, it's great work. The, the, the cool thing is that when I think about generally, like, the creation of technology or the creation of art or the creation of this podcast, it's a reflection of the consciousness of the people who are creating it. And so to be able to be in there and work about, with consciousness and how the culture's consciousness is and how the people interact with each other and how they view themselves to me is, uh, uh, a complete honor to be able to work there with them.

Chris Williamson 1:09 Because you're further up than all of the things that are going to come after that, all of the products-

Joe Hudson 1:14 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:14 ... the branding, the way that they deploy this stuff.

Joe Hudson 1:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16 Yeah, that's interesting.

Joe Hudson 1:17 That's true. Yeah, and, and they're just sweethearts. I can't tell you, once that news came out, so many people came to me and, you know, with a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear in the AI space, and, and I understand why people have the fear, uh, not the, both the people on the outside and the inside, like, "Oh, th- this is a revolutionary technology. What's gonna happen? We don't actually know." So-

Chris Williamson 1:38 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 1:38 ... fear arises. And, and I think what surprised me about it is just, like, especially OpenAI, just the folks are just sweeties. Like, they're just, like, such lovely humans.

Chris Williamson 1:49 Mm.

Joe Hudson 1:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:51 What drives you? What are you trying to achieve with your work?

Joe Hudson 1:56 Oh, yeah. So, so what I would say is that generally what we, we have this epidemic of stress and lack of enjoyment in, in our society right now. And, and the thing about that is that it's corrosive both on an individual and on a societal level. So individually, it means that we do not learn as well. It means that we make bad decisions. It means that we, um, don't get the world that we want. It means that we're uncomfortably living. It means we die faster, all those things because we're stressed and we're not enjoying life. But on a society level, if I'm stressed, I mean, the world's a threat. That's why we stress as mammals, right? So, "Oh my gosh, the world is a threat." And if I acts, act like the world is a threat, then eventually, if I'm like, "You're a threat, you're a threat, you're a threat," eventually you're gonna be a threat to me. I mean, if I treat you like an asshole, you're gonna act like an asshole eventually. If I treat you like a threat, you're gonna act like a threat eventually.

Chris Williamson 2:53 Mm.

Joe Hudson 2:54 So you're looking at our world right now, and it's whole bunch of stressed-out people treating everybody like threats, and everybody's starting to act like a threat.

Chris Williamson 3:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 3:01 Doesn't matter whether you're looking at politics or marriages or relationships or... So there's this just... So to me, then the question is, like, how do we work on that stress, that, and, and increase the enjoyment? And typically, the, the way people look at that is, "I'm too busy. The world is too complicated. The politics are doing this. Like, uh, there's a big unknown future, I'm s- you know, I have my phone, and it, that's distracting me." So they put it all outside of themselves, and that's actually... They, they contribute, like, having a cell phone, you know, buzzing all the time is gonna increase your stress, no doubt. But they're not the actual cause of the stress. The cause of the stress is three things, and then this is where I get, this is where I'm really, like, this is where my work comes in. The first thing is, um, repressed emotions causes a shit ton of stress in humans. Second thing is lack of connection, causes a huge amount of stress, and the third thing, which I think is most relatable for people, is the negative self-talk, causes a lot of stress. So if there's a voice in your head that is constantly criticizing you, you're constantly under attack, that's constant stress. That's like a war zone in your head. And so, so that's where my work is. My work is in changing the voice in the head, and, and, and the thing about the voice in the head is that I think most people, the way they think about it is, "I want it to stop," or, "I'm gonna be in self-improvement, I'm gonna improve myself, I'm gonna improve..." But that's just more abuse.

Chris Williamson 4:38 Mm.

Joe Hudson 4:39 So I flip from self-improvement to self-understanding, right? Today, we are starting this thing, and you're looking at the thing, and you understand the videos, and you're... And it's because you have understanding of all that stuff.

Chris Williamson 4:52 Mm.

Joe Hudson 4:53 You didn't say, "I've gotta learn, you, better, better, I gotta be better, I gotta be..." You're just like, you learnt the stuff, and then it happens. But somehow when we interact with ourselves, it's, "You gotta be better, you gotta be better, you gotta be better."

Chris Williamson 5:04 Mm.

Joe Hudson 5:05 Instead of, "How do I understand myself?" And then all of that changes just by the nature of understanding. And then emotions, what you'll hear a lot of in the, in the sphere is, "I'm s-" emotional regulation, emotional management, and this weird thing happens in our brain that it's like we either have, um, we are either controlled by our emotions or we're controlling our emotions, and neither of them lead to emotional clarity. One, in repression, like right now, if I said to you, "Stop feeling all of your emotions," I'm gonna ask you to try to do it, stop feeling all of your emotions, your muscles constricted, your face just got red.

Chris Williamson 5:44 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 5:45 That is stress. That is what stress is.

Chris Williamson 5:47 Yup.

Joe Hudson 5:48 So self-manage- management of your emotions is a s- tightening down of the system, and so instead, we think about it as emotional clarity. And so what that means is that if you have a tube, let's say, of emotion moving through you, and let's call that, this emotion particularly anger, and you crank it this way, it's like...... nice shirt.

Chris Williamson 6:09 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 6:10 And if you crank it this way, it's, "Fuck you, you son of a bitch." But if it's actually, like, open, that anger is clarity. It's, um, it's boundaries, it's Gandhi, it's Martin Luther King. That's what that anger looks like. And so, but you don't get that through management. You get that through welcoming and loving the emotion.

Chris Williamson 6:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 6:31 So that's the emotional side of it, and then, um, the last side is just connection. So whether it's the longest study Harvard ever did that shows that connection creates better health, outcomes, more happiness or just the fact that if you do the Occam's razor of connection when you're thinking about any problem that you have, it almost always helps you solve the problem.

Chris Williamson 6:53 How so?

Joe Hudson 6:54 So how do I get a better podcast? Or how do I connect with the people better? How do I, um, better relationship with my wife? Oh, I'm gonna connect better because connection is what humans actually want. So any problem that you have that's human based, which is most of the problems that we have, so it's not... It, it even can help you, let's say you're a hedge fund manager. You're programming, you know, the next AI. You know and I know that if you're playing sports or if you're programming, your level of self-connection is gonna influence how well you perform. We call it flow, but it's really just connection.

Chris Williamson 7:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 7:31 So if you look at connection, it's just very productive, but it also is what we are drawn to as humans. Like, when my daughter was, like, not only, like... I think she was, like, 18 months old. It makes me misty thinking about this. Like, if I came in all amped, my nervous system was all amped from... She would, like, sit on my lap and she'd grab my face and she'd be like, "I love you, daddy." She's like, "I, I need to feel that connection with you."

Chris Williamson 7:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 7:59 Yeah. Now she makes fun of me before.

Chris Williamson 8:01 Duh.

Joe Hudson 8:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. How the tables have turned.

Joe Hudson 8:04 Exactly. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:05 Um, you talked about the negative inner voice, that critical self-talk.

Joe Hudson 8:09 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:09 Where does that come from?

Joe Hudson 8:11 Typically, it comes from, uh, somebody who was raising us. Typically, and that could be... As a matter of fact, that same daughter and I were listening to our podcast on, Um, Voice in the Head, and she's like, "I..." She was 10 years old. She's like, "I know where my voice in the head comes from." I'm like, "Where?" She's like, "My teacher and my grandma," and, like, she just, like, named the people she could hear in her head. Um, yeah, so it's basically stories that we were told when we were younger. So if mom and dad are mad at you, and you're, you're thinking to yourself, "Oh, that has to be something I did." It doesn't have to do with, you know, at eight, you're not like, it's their coffee habit or, you know, they had a bad day at work, anything like that.

Chris Williamson 8:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 8:55 So then you start, "Oh, I shouldn't do that. I have to do this." And you're basically trying to figure out how to exist in the world, and this voice starts developing in your head.

Chris Williamson 9:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 9:06 And it's an incredibly non-productive voice. It takes so much energy. Like, I think somebody... I think it's the Cleveland... I think it's Cleveland Clinic? I could have that wrong, but they say that there's 50, 60,000 thoughts that a person has a day, most of those repetitive, many of those negative.

Chris Williamson 9:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 9:24 And it's like, it frees up so much energy when that stuff changes.

Chris Williamson 9:28 Yeah. It's, uh, it's interesting thinking about how kids, they, they can't change their environment, so they have to learn to exist within it. You know, you, you don't have a passport and a bank account and the Uber app and, and, you know, Airbnb to be able to go and get yourself away. You don't have... You don't even know what that means. Like, what does it mean-

Joe Hudson 9:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:49 ... to do this? You, you don't even know if you're in the right when your parents say that you're not in the right. It's like, "No, no, no. That's not what it should be." And you go, "Well, the, the case for the defense seems to be woefully underfunded here."

Joe Hudson 10:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:05 You know? (laughs) The case for the prosecution-

Joe Hudson 10:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:07 ... has all of the benefits of being an adult and being the one that's in command and them being two of them and only one of you.

Joe Hudson 10:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:13 Um, and, yeah.

Joe Hudson 10:15 And, and it's normal. This is the only thing that you've ever known, so it's completely normalized. You're not even getting the idea of like, "Oh, it could be different."

Chris Williamson 10:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 10:24 This, this is just it. And, and we're geared, neurologically speaking, we're geared to, to be programmed in those years. So, you know, the brainwaves, theta brainwave is a brainwave that basically is the programming brainwave, right? It's like, it's that place between awake and asleep is when adults feel it typically, um, but kids feel it most of the time from zero to seven years old. So in human development terms, they're basically in that place that is-

Chris Williamson 10:51 Spongy.

Joe Hudson 10:52 Yeah. Exactly. And it's why they believe in fairy tales and Santa Claus and all that stuff because they're in that world. And so it's like the place where we get programmed.

Chris Williamson 11:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 11:00 And so that's why if you have certain modalities of healing, there's some that is like, "I can describe everything that's wrong with me, but nothing has changed." That's because you're working in the head. If you're working more intellectually, if you're working in what, that theta brainwave space, you're like, "I don't, really can't describe the whole thing, but shit, my world's changed."

Chris Williamson 11:20 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 11:21 And that's why those, when those modalities, oftentimes the ones that work really effectively are the ones that you can't quite explain what the fuck happened.

Chris Williamson 11:28 Stuff like breathwork, perhaps?

Joe Hudson 11:29 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 11:30 Yeah, yeah. They rip you out of that, "I have control. Here I am self-authoring, making things go."

Joe Hudson 11:36 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Hudson 11:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:38 What about self-reliance? I feel like there's an issue of too much self-reliance. A lot of people want to be highly agentic. They want to self-author. They want to be able to take control. I don't need to be able to rely on anybody else.

Joe Hudson 11:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:50 But is this such a thing as too much self-reliance?

Joe Hudson 11:53 Yeah, so I think it's a staged... You know, it's just the way that you, like, where you're at developmentally. So there are some people in the world who feel like they don't have any control over their life, like they're tossed and turned, so self-reliance there is probably a great thing to learn, right? That, that's a great moment for them to learn, "Oh, I have choice. I, I can command. I do..."... have the ability to make my world what I want it to be. But then at some point, that weighs down. Then you're, "Shit, I'm responsible for everything," and uh, uh, uh. You know, and-

Chris Williamson 12:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 12:25 ... I can't rely on anybody, and that's typically where those super self-reliant people, and I'm speaking about us here, but like, both of us grew up this way. On some level, there was some learning earlier on in our lives that it was, um, "I- I am alone in this."

Chris Williamson 12:43 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 12:43 There's some, "I'm alone in this," and that makes us, "I don't wanna feel..." So this is where the emotional thing comes in. "I don't wanna feel that deep aloneness. Couldn't feel it as a kid. Don't wanna feel it now, and therefore, my reaction to not feel it is self-reliance."

Chris Williamson 12:56 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 12:56 And so that really slows us down because you can only accomplish so much as yourself. You can accomplish a tremendous amount as a team, but you can't do that in a team where you're always, always alone, feeling like it's all on you. We all have had bosses like that. They're horrible to work with.

Chris Williamson 13:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 13:14 They start yelling, "I'm all alone in this. Why can't anybody fucking blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." That's like ultra self-reliance instead of actually realizing that... This is something that I teach CEOs all the time. Everybody here at this company wants you to feel like th- they're doing a good job. Everybody in this company cares that you think they're doing a good job. Everybo- everybody in this company didn't w- didn't wake up and say, "You know what I wanna do? I wanna go and have a shitty time at work today."

Chris Williamson 13:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 13:41 "I wanna really under-fucking-perform." Nobody wakes up saying that, and yet you feel all alone in this because CEOs are typically very self-reliant.

Chris Williamson 13:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 13:50 Yeah, so it's a blessing and a curse. It's just what stage you're in.

Chris Williamson 13:55 What would be an indication to somebody in their personal life that they are overly self-reliant? What would be the sort of behaviors, thought patterns, ways that they show up, things that they do?

Joe Hudson 14:06 I think typically it's, "I'm alone in this." It's that feeling of, "Oh, I'm- I'm- I can't depend on somebody. See? They're not there for me again. See? I've been abandoned again." It's that feeling, "I- it has to be on me. I have to do it."

Chris Williamson 14:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 14:21 So I had a- I had a- a client- have a client who worked with one of the biggest Silicon Valley narcissists, and every week-

Chris Williamson 14:29 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 14:30 ... it was review time, and they would just yell at her, just yell at her and her team, and then they'd go to the next team and yell at them and their team, and they'd go to the next team and yell at them-

Chris Williamson 14:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 14:38 ... and their team. And one day, she just looked at him and said, "Hey, I see that what you are saying, your wisdom, is really important, and I want you to know that everybody in this room wants you to get your vision met. It's just hard for us to do it when you're yelling at us." And he never yelled at her again because she addressed the actual underlying thing, which is, "You're not alone, and we wanna help you."

Chris Williamson 15:01 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 15:02 And so if you're dealing with somebody who has that self-reliance, that's the- the- the solve, is to say, "Hey, I see what you care- the how much you care about this thing. I see that you really want this, and I wanna help you," if you wanna help them. I mean, don't be-

Chris Williamson 15:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 15:15 Don't be inauthentic about it.

Chris Williamson 15:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 15:18 Yeah, and that's the solve of working with somebody like that. If you address the core underlying issue that's there, then you'll solve it.

Chris Williamson 15:26 It seems to me, uh, looking at your work, that a lot of the solutions or a lot of the answers come back to the same, uh, the same endpoint, which is some variant of soften up, open your heart.

Joe Hudson 15:39 (laughs) Yeah, so that's- that's actually... So that's because of those three things I was talking about. Connection benefits from softening up and opening your heart.

Chris Williamson 15:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 15:49 Like, that's how we are going to connect. I'm not gonna connect with you if I'm like... Like, that's not gonna create the connection.

Chris Williamson 15:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 15:56 It is also the result, and we talked about this last time, but joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house that her children aren't welcome. And so if you actually welcome and allow for emotional clarity, allow for that emotional movement, that you're neither- either taken by it or controlling it, then the natural outcome is that softening.

Chris Williamson 16:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 16:17 And if you aren't beating the fuck out of yourself in your head, then the natural outcome is the softening.

Chris Williamson 16:21 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 16:22 So that's, yeah, so that's how it works.

Chris Williamson 16:24 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 16:24 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 16:26 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 16:26 I think for a lot of people in the modern world, they've steeled themselves against-

Joe Hudson 16:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:32 ... pain, against, uh, being open, uh, vulnerability, uh, this sort of fear of needing anyone. "I don't need anybody. If I need somebody, then that means that they can take away from me something which is necessary."

Joe Hudson 16:46 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:47 "And- and how am I going to operate? That's my life support system."

Joe Hudson 16:49 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:49 "But if I- if my life support system is completely endogenous, and you know, I'm- I'm- got a solar panel on my back, and I can just continue to trek even if I move more slowly, even if it's more miserable, even if I feel alone, even if I'm not supported and I'm detached-"

Joe Hudson 17:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:02 "... at least it can't ever be taken away from me." I had this insight, this thought, one of the reasons that, um, people continue to prioritize their careers over relationships is because only they can leave their career, but not only they can leave the relationship. That somebody else-

Joe Hudson 17:19 Ah.

Chris Williamson 17:19 ... can exit a relationship.

Joe Hudson 17:21 That hurts. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:23 Why does that hurt?

Joe Hudson 17:24 Oh, just that like, um, the idea that the lack of vulnerability will bring you happiness.

Chris Williamson 17:31 I think it steels you against the potential for unhappiness, perhaps would be the way that people see it.

Joe Hudson 17:36 Uh, yes, exactly, but it ensures it. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:38 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you guarantee failure privately by not exposing yourself to failure publicly, right? It's like, "I know-

Joe Hudson 17:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:46 ... that if I- if I stick to this particular route," and this is, you know, the- the- the person hard-charging, chasing after their career, this is what comes first. And you think, "Well, what about, like, what are you doing this for? What- what's the out- what's the outcome that you're looking to get here?" Yeah, you want recognition and validation and all the rest of it, but it's like, "You've- you've got it in the person that you lie next to at bed every night."

Joe Hudson 18:06 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:06 "Like, you've got it in the kid that's, you know, 10 feet above you in the next room."

Joe Hudson 18:10 Right, yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:11 "Why are you seeking all of this validation from people who..."... if you stopped doing what you did, would stop giving a fuck about you, whereas the people that are in the house around you don't care about what you do, they only care about who you are. And you're trading people who care about you for who you are for people who care about you for what you do.

Joe Hudson 18:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:28 And I think the reason is-

Joe Hudson 18:30 That's what makes me sad. That's the thing that hurts. People chasing happiness and, and only creating their own misery in it.

Chris Williamson 18:44 Mm-hmm. I think it's a, and I understand it-

Joe Hudson 18:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:50 ... it is an easy route to avoid something being taken away from you because it's only you that can stop driving on the mission, right? But do, y- y- uh, you are playing... When you're doing a, a career, you're playing tennis by hitting a ball against the wall and for as long as the wall doesn't break, which, you know, it's gonna take a very long time for you to do that with a tennis ball, you can keep playing, whereas a relationship-

Joe Hudson 19:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:17 ... is you playing tennis with somebody else and if that somebody else decides, "I don't want to play tennis with you anymore"-

Joe Hudson 19:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:23 ... that, there's a degree of vulnerability there that makes you think, "Well, I'm just going to focus all of my attention on the career side of stuff."

Joe Hudson 19:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:30 Because that means that at least it can't be stopped unless I decide to kill the music.

Joe Hudson 19:35 Yeah, the, the two things that... Y- yes, I agree that's the thought process. The, the two things that I think are being miscalculated there is just the idea of human needs. So when you're self-reliant, human needs in your mind exist as water, food, shelter, you know?

Chris Williamson 19:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 19:52 Maybe having some money. When you're not self-reliant, you realize human needs, and so there's not the need to survive, there's the need to thrive and humans can't thrive without connection. People can't thrive without communication, with a sense of safety. There's a whole bunch of other needs that are there just to thrive, right?

Chris Williamson 20:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 20:10 And so that's the first miscalculation. The second miscalculation they have is that that heartbreak can't create more happiness. Every time you allow yourself, your heart to break, every time you allow your heart to break, it increases your capacity to love.

Chris Williamson 20:24 Say more. How so?

Joe Hudson 20:26 Ah, uh, uh, so, uh, my buddy, my buddy, uh, gets in this relationship, uh, great relationship. He's, like, heavy drinker at the time. He's got a business. It's kinda doing okay. He's like, he's, he's, uh, doing re-vegetation on, uh, Indian tribe. He's, like, doing this stuff and this woman breaks up with him. And he asked me, you know, "What should I do?" And he has this long trip from Flagstaff to Yuma and, like, every, I just want you to mourn, to, like, cry, ridiculous cry, on the way there and on the way back. So that's twice a week for a couple of hours. And he calls me a couple of days later. He's like, "Man, the voice is coming out of my..." He's like, "I'm wailing. I sound like..." Like, "Who knew that I could, like, make these sounds?"

Chris Williamson 21:11 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 21:11 And, uh, six months later, he's in shape. Six months later, his business is thriving. Six months later, he's, his, like, his home life is, like, better. He's, like... Everything is better about his life. And the next relationship he got into was twice as healthy-

Chris Williamson 21:28 Mm.

Joe Hudson 21:28 ... because he mourned the thing and, and then the way he describes it is that, "I started mourning the relationship, and then I mourned everything that got me into the relationship. All the things I'd learned, all the things that I thought were true that allowed me to put up with the stuff that I put up with or not speak my truth or not say the things that were important to me in that relationship."

Chris Williamson 21:48 Mm.

Joe Hudson 21:48 And so if we allow ourselves to feel that grief, it totally changes how we, uh, interact with the world. And another example of this is, um, my wife and I, we've been married 26 years, and it's maybe seven, I don't know how many times now, but every once in a while, we'll be in a fight and our process now is we'll just mourn the end of the marriage. We'll go and cry and just be like, "It's not gonna work," and just fully mourn the marriage so that we can show up and say the things that we actually want to say that are our truth bec-

Chris Williamson 22:24 Why can't you say them without mourning the end of the marriage?

Joe Hudson 22:26 Because you're scared of the mour- you're scared of the end of the marriage. Right? How many things have you, do you not say in a relationship because you're scared of their, they're gonna react, they're gonna abandon you, they're gonna leave you, they're gonna get mad at you?

Chris Williamson 22:39 Mm.

Joe Hudson 22:39 Right? We walk on eggshells because of the emotional response of the other. If I fully grieve the end of the marriage, then I can act. I'm like, "I've already felt it. I'm alre- I've, I'm already through it."

Chris Williamson 22:49 Mm.

Joe Hudson 22:49 "Now I can be myself."

Chris Williamson 22:50 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Joe Hudson 22:51 It's the same way that the samurai or the Stoics or, or, uh, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying over-

Chris Williamson 22:58 Envision your death.

Joe Hudson 22:59 ... come fear of death.

Chris Williamson 22:59 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 22:59 You just go through the thing and then you're like... Because what we're avoiding is the emotional experience. We're not avoiding the actual thing. H- Like, so a big high achiever thing that people all fear is, "Oh, I'm gonna go homeless," right? "If I don't, like, keep on going, I'm gonna go homeless." So if I said to somebody, "You're go- yeah, you're gonna be homeless but you're never gonna be happier. The, uh, like, the joy that you're gonna feel is gonna be amazing, that level of connection, you're gonna feel so good about yourself." Now the, what the mind is gonna go, "That can't happen if I'm homeless."

Chris Williamson 23:26 What is there to be afraid of now?

Joe Hudson 23:27 But what is there to be afraid of? 'Cause we're actually scared of the emotional result of things, not the actual thing itself.

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Chris Williamson 24:40 Two of your insights, we often abandon ourselves in an attempt to prevent other people from abandoning us.

Joe Hudson 24:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:46 And if you're trying to manage other people's feelings, you're abandoning your own.

Joe Hudson 24:50 Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, that, that's a great example of those things. So generally, if you're walking on eggshells, it's one of two ways. Either I'm gonna break the person if I say my truth, and that means you're dealing with somebody who's more passive-aggressive-

Chris Williamson 25:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 25:07 ... if you're dealing with somebody who's more aggressive than you're worried about them getting angry at you-

Chris Williamson 25:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 25:11 ... and so you're trying to manage them, and if you're managing them, you're not in your own truth.

Chris Williamson 25:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 25:16 So in your own truth, you're gonna say your truth and love an open heart, and you're gonna deal with the consequences of it. And if you don't, you get resentment. That's where the, uh, resentment comes from.

Chris Williamson 25:28 Where does passive-aggression come from?

Joe Hudson 25:30 A person who's not able to be aggressive. (laughs) So, so if, if I'm in a, doing a workshop and someone gets passive-aggressive with me, I'm like, "Okay, just get angry." So it means that anger was bad in their childhood that-

Chris Williamson 25:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 25:44 ... and so I can't be angry, so I'm gonna go, "Nice dress."

Chris Williamson 25:48 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 25:48 I'm not gonna actually, or I'm gonna be late, or I'm going to not call you when I say I'm gonna call you, all the things that passive-aggressive people do.

Chris Williamson 25:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 25:56 The thing about passive-aggression is that the people who are passive-aggressive often don't know they're doing it. Sometimes they do, but oftentimes they don't know they're doing it. What they feel, like the person who's self-reliant feels alone, the passive-aggressive person feels like, uh, they're stuck, lo- they feel like a, like, "I can't, I, I can't get out of this situation, and so the only thing I can do is..." (fingers snapping)

Chris Williamson 26:21 Dig away.

Joe Hudson 26:21 Yeah, dig away. Which, by the way, is what we do with ourselves. The, that's how the voice in the head works, the exact same way. So some part of our voice in the head that we hear and we can really go with is, "You should work out more." I mean, you probably don't do that, but, (laughs) but, "You should work out more." And then, then there's this other part that, like, is like, "Yeah, maybe I won't go to the gym, I'm gonna..." And so we're, we actually have the same relationship inside of us.

Chris Williamson 26:47 Mm.

Joe Hudson 26:47 And if that relationship inside of us changes, then the relationship externally changes.

Chris Williamson 26:51 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 26:52 Yeah. So if you don't accept your own passive-aggression internally, you won't accept it in the outside world.

Chris Williamson 26:59 Yeah, I think... Uh, I had this idea of shadow sentences, that a lot of the time people are scared of saying what it is that they want or what it is that they need. So instead of s- pointing at it directly, they sort of gesture in, in the direction of it, it's sort of, "It's over there," they sort of leave it to hang in the air a little bit, like sort of dropping a fart and then leaving the room, I suppose-

Joe Hudson 27:20 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 27:20 ... or, you know, like sh- people say this about LaCroix, you know, the sparkling water, it's so lightly flavored that they say, i- if you're drinking the lemon one, it's like somebody shouted the word "lemon" in the next room while it was being built.

Joe Hudson 27:31 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 27:31 And that's what shadow sentences make me think about, you know, they're sort of-

Joe Hudson 27:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:34 ... um, phrases said through closed doors and, and thick walls.

Joe Hudson 27:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:39 It's like, "What was... Hang on, what was that? Was-"

Joe Hudson 27:41 Yeah "... Is that..." And then you end up with the, "Well, I mean, it's culpably deniable," and the reason that I, I think it feels safe to be passive-aggressive in that way or to do, use these shadow sentences is that if you don't specifically ask for something, the denial of the thing doesn't feel quite as bad. Right.

Chris Williamson 27:59 Because you go, "I didn't actually ask for it." So they've got culpable deniability in, uh, disappointing me, in not giving me what it is that I want, and my needs don't feel quite as, um, spiked at, because they weren't fully rebuffed, because I didn't actually ask for the thing that it is that I was after.

Joe Hudson 28:18 Right. A- and the, the worst part is that it's you're less likely to get it, because if you're worried about the reaction of a, asking for what you want, then you're gonna ask for it in a, in a weird way.

Chris Williamson 28:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 28:29 So if I'm s- scared you're gonna get angry at me, I'll be like, "Oh, yeah, so I was thinking I was kinda would love it if we could-"

Chris Williamson 28:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 28:35 "... you know, do a thing." And that's like, "Uh, I don't want, I don't want that, no."

Chris Williamson 28:40 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 28:40 You know, I, I want to be met with somebody who's in themselves.

Chris Williamson 28:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 28:44 And so, so not only is it not being direct, it also makes it an increased likelihood that you're not gonna get the thing you want-

Chris Williamson 28:52 Mm.

Joe Hudson 28:53 ... which is, which is brutal.

Chris Williamson 28:54 Yes.

Joe Hudson 28:55 Yeah, but it's such a vulnerable thing to just ask directly for what you want.

Chris Williamson 28:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 28:59 People, like, that is a really... As a matter of fact, so yesterday, I'm, uh, (laughs) I'm with a, a guy who I've worked with for a long time and he's showing me his dating app. And in his dating app, he has a question, "Just tell me one thing that you want," like, that's his prompt-

Chris Williamson 29:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 29:14 ... like, "What, one, one thing that you want." And I was like, "What percentage of women answer that question?" He's like, "It's about 5%." I'm like, "That's probably where you're gonna find your woman-"

Chris Williamson 29:27 Mm.

Joe Hudson 29:28 "... who can actually own wha- that means that she's done the work-"

Chris Williamson 29:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 29:31 "... that she can actually own her want."

Chris Williamson 29:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 29:34 Yeah. So, yeah. It just happened the other day. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:38 Defensiveness, you mentioned that. Why do people get defensive?

Joe Hudson 29:43 Why do people get defensive? Because they're protecting their ego. They think that they're, the, and, and they don't even actually know what they're protecting typically. Um, so anything that you can get defensive about is, is true about you. So, like, what, you could tell me I'm stupid. I can think of a way I'm stupid.

Chris Williamson 30:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 30:02 You can tell me I'm a dick. I can think of a way I know I'm a dick.

Chris Williamson 30:05 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 30:05 You can tell me I'm wrong. I can think of six ways I'm wrong. (laughs) Like, there is nothing you could say to me that isn't fucking true.

Chris Williamson 30:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 30:13 So what am I defending? So I have to actually believe that there's a me to defend to be defensive. It means I have to be in my head, I can't be in my heart. If I'm in my heart, there's nothing to defend.... like there, it could hurt. "Oh, God, that hurts." Like, "Why are you saying that?" "Ouch." I'll say, "Ouch to that."

Chris Williamson 30:37 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 30:38 But there's nothing to defend.

Chris Williamson 30:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 30:40 Like what, what, like, who am I proving it to? What am I like... What, like what, what exactly am I defending? That's the... A- anytime I see somebody defense, I'm like, "What exactly are you defending?" And that really throws people 'cause they can't find it.

Chris Williamson 30:54 Yeah, it's interesting. I suppose sometimes people inject themselves into situations. Well, you know, defensiveness when somebody is being attacked-

Joe Hudson 31:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:04 ... so to speak, uh, is, I guess, one level of it, but a degree of defensiveness, which is not even necessarily about that person. It's like, "Hey, this thing happened and it made me feel sad," and then defensiveness comes out from the other person.

Joe Hudson 31:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:20 It's this sort of injection of them into you-

Joe Hudson 31:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:23 ... or into the situation.

Joe Hudson 31:24 Oh, yeah, that way, yeah. (laughs) Okay, so there's one thing that it rhymes with the voice in your head. If you say something to me that makes me defensive, whether it's at me or not at me-

Chris Williamson 31:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 31:33 ... it rhymes with something that I say in my head-

Chris Williamson 31:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 31:35 ... to myself.

Chris Williamson 31:36 "I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy."

Joe Hudson 31:37 Right.

Chris Williamson 31:38 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 31:38 Exact- Or, "I shouldn't eat wheat." Like, you're like, you say to me, uh, "Yeah, I've given up gluten," and I get defensive. It means there's something in me who's also like, "Yeah, my diet's got crap."

Chris Williamson 31:52 Shouldn't be eating wheat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Hudson 31:53 Yeah, exactly. So, so it's rhyming with something in my head is one of the, one of the things that's, that we're defensive against. And if you think about it this way, this is a key to like unlocking the way the negative self-talk works, is that you're doing, you do that same thing with yourself again. You, your voice tells you this, "You should do this, da, da, da." And then there's a defensiveness that happens, and that keeps that whole loop cycling. Like, like there, there's a resistance to force, and when we try to force ourselves, we resist against it. And so that just keeps the whole thing in place.

Chris Williamson 32:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 32:26 And it's why, which is typically why shame is a s- emotion that stagnates. Anything that you're ashamed about is something that you're gonna continue doing. So if I said to you, "Write down the five things that you've told yourself you should do for the last 10 years, and you haven't, and you haven't changed or you haven't done"-

Chris Williamson 32:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 32:44 ... I guarantee you there's shame on all those things. I guarantee you that you tell yourself you should do all of those things because shame stagnates. And it's why self-improvement doesn't work as well as self-understanding. 'Cause if you're shaming yourself to improve, if you're on yourself to improve, that force will be resisted.

Chris Williamson 33:03 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 33:04 And it happens between people and it happens within yourself.

Chris Williamson 33:08 Yeah. Uh, the desire, the, the sort of tendency that we all have to whip ourselves into submission, to think, "Well, if I just beat myself hard enough..." And again, it, that rhymes with the voice in the head.

Joe Hudson 33:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:21 You know, if you're very self-reliant, if you're the sort of person that's got hard charging type A insecure overachiever.

Joe Hudson 33:26 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:27 Um, you go, "Well, this, this seems to... It's got me places in other areas of my life."

Joe Hudson 33:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:33 "So maybe that's the way that I should show up in my relationship." Maybe that's, you know-

Joe Hudson 33:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:38 ... as soon as the partner says something which it kicks one of the trip wires that lay in my head, you go, "Well, you know, yeah, that, that is right." But to sit with the, "Huh, what if I am this thing?" Like, what if that, what if, what if that is the case?

Joe Hudson 33:56 Not what, it is absolutely fucking true. There's nothing you could say. Say something to me that isn't true about me. Not physically, obviously. You could say like, I'm six foot nine-

Chris Williamson 34:05 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 34:06 ... but like, there, there's no part of humanity that I don't encompass.

Chris Williamson 34:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 34:13 Liar. Yeah, I can think of it, like anything.

Chris Williamson 34:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 34:15 It's absolutely true.

Chris Williamson 34:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 34:18 So the idea that to be defensive against it is, it's just, uh, you know, it's, it's almost like admitting. When you're defensive, you're almost admitting like, "Yeah, I'm really ashamed about that."

Chris Williamson 34:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 34:30 Which is actually a really cool thing if you're working. If you're, like, if I'm with my wife or I'm with my kid and I see them get defensive, I see what actually is happening is they're, uh, in shame and I address the shame. So in a relationship, if I see somebody getting defensive, I'll say like, "Oh, there's nothing in me that wants you to feel bad about this thing that I just said. There's nothing in me that wants you to feel like you should be ashamed or that you've done anything wrong. And I see how much you're trying." I, and then I see them. I like, "How I see how much you're trying. I see how much you care about this thing. I see how you want that to be different."

Chris Williamson 35:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 35:07 And the whole, the fight just pfft goes away. Because all that's happening is two people throwing shame back at each other in a fight. "You should be ashamed." "No, you should be ashamed." "No, you should be ashamed." And one person is thinking, "Oh, I'm defending myself," and the other person's thinking, "Oh, I'm defending myself." But this person's thinking, "You're attacking me," and this person's thinking, "You're attacking me," but it's just two people defending themselves from shame, and then the other person's taking it as an attack.

Chris Williamson 35:33 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 35:35 And all that needs to be s- done is, "I see you, and I don't want you to be ashamed." And if they, if you say that with an open heart and they can see it, there's what, what, there's nothing left

Joe Hudson 35:44 to fight over.

Chris Williamson 35:45 So that's, uh, an, a way to interject as the person speaking to the one that's maybe a little more defensive, at least in this situation. What about, uh, accepting that? Or w- what, how can people get over their own defensiveness?

Joe Hudson 36:02 Uh-

Chris Williamson 36:02 How can people become less defensive in themselves?

Joe Hudson 36:04 Yeah, so the way I think about shifting behavior is that there's three... This is gonna be a long answer to your question, but I think it, it's really useful. There's three ways, there's three brains at play, right? There's the, um, the human brain, prefrontal cortex. There's the mammalian brain, which is the emotional, um, part of our system. And then there's the reptilian brain, which is the nervous system part of our system. And if you don't address the change on all three levels, then-... it's, the change isn't particularly gonna stick. So you really wanna address it on all three levels. So if you find yourself defensive, the first one is intellectually find that it's true. Intellectually just go, "I know that whatever they said, there is truth to it." And find the truth in it. And so that kind of calms the intellectual piece of it. What the emotional thing is happening is that if you're in a defensive place, you're in shame. There's, you think there's something wrong with you. And so usually what shame is doing is stagnating an emotion underneath it. So if you can feel the emotion that's underneath the shame and fully allow, like welcome that in, not accept, "I will accept this emotion," it's like, "I'm welcoming this emotion in and feeling it," then that's the emotional side of it. And then, and like I said, we make decisions to feel certain ways, right? We're, we don't want to be homeless because we don't want to feel a certain way.

Chris Williamson 37:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 37:25 And then there's the nervous system, and the nervous system is telling, "I'm not safe. I'm under attack." And so if you can just come to your senses, literally feel, like rub your legs or just put your attention on the bottom of your feet, anything where you're, where you're coming to your senses, it will calm the nervous system down. And those are the three ways of doing it.

Chris Williamson 37:46 Mm-hmm. Yeah. You say if you're scared of feeling an emotion, you're already in it.

Joe Hudson 37:50 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:51 What's that mean?

Joe Hudson 37:53 Yeah. Uh, so there's... If I am scared of feeling something, then I am... I don't know how to say it any clearer, actually (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 38:08 I'm almost ready again.

Joe Hudson 38:08 (laughs) Yeah, I was about to define it b- by saying, just restating it. Uh, if there is an emotion that you don't want to feel and there's that... It means that you've already tasted it to not, to not want it. The problem is that you, you often... Intellectually we don't understand that we are in, in the emotion. So especially if you were brought up like I was, like deeply in my head. So I had to learn that I was scared b- by the way my mind worked. So I was in binary thinking. Anytime I was in binary thinking, I'm like, "Oh, that's fear," because I actually couldn't feel the system. So if you take a kid who was physically abused and you put a quarter in one hand without telling him and a key in another hand, they won't be able to tell you which is which because they've learned to cut off the sensations of their body. And it's the same thing. If you were emotionally put through it, called abused or just told emotions weren't okay, you will learn to stop feeling those emotions.

Chris Williamson 39:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 39:09 And so a lot of times, we don't actually know we're in the emotion that's happening.

Chris Williamson 39:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 39:13 But if you're scared of that thing, it's a great signal, of the emotion, you're... It's a great signal you're in it and you're resisting it-

Chris Williamson 39:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 39:19 ... and that's what the fear is actually doing.

Chris Williamson 39:20 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting.

Joe Hudson 39:24 Yeah. "I'm scared to be abandoned" means you're already abandoning yourself, right? That moment in the relationship where you're not saying your true thing, you're scared of abandonment, you're already in it. That, that self-reliant person who is, who is scared of being left alone and are having to do it all by themselves, they're already left alone and already-

Chris Williamson 39:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 39:47 ... having to do it by themselves.

Chris Williamson 39:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:49 Yeah, the thing that you fear has already come to pass.

Joe Hudson 39:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:52 Yeah. And you've been part of the architect that's put it together as well.

Joe Hudson 39:55 Yeah. Emotionally, yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Hudson 39:57 Yeah, yeah. Live with it long enough and the actual thing will happen too.

Chris Williamson 40:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 40:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:03 Yeah. Uh, when your thinking is binary, fear is running the show.

Joe Hudson 40:07 Yeah. So it's just... There's two things that the mind does when fear is at play. The first thing is it does is it creates binary thinking. So it's, "I buy the car" or "I don't buy the car." It's not, "I negotiate for the car. Maybe I buy the car as a Honda instead of the Toyota version." We just do this black and white thinking. "Either I leave her or I don't leave her. I either leave the job or I don't leave the job." So immediately you know you're compromised. Your intellect is not working at the level that it could work if you're doing any kind of binary thinking. The other thing that it does is it creates a false end. "I will be homeless," and then you don't think, "And then what?"

Chris Williamson 40:41 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 40:42 I... You know, even the, like I said, that death, uh, meditation of the samurai, they go through the end of death. "I'm gonna die and then that's it." They don't, you don't think about, "And what's next?" And so that's, those are the two things that when you do that, you're in fear. And, and that's why making a decision from fear often begets more fear, because you're limiting the possibility that's there. You're saying, "Oh, it's gonna be this way or this way" in your mind, and so you're creating that reality-

Chris Williamson 41:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 41:11 ... in, in the world. And so black and white realities create fear 'cause there's, you know... If, if you were either friends or were enemies, like that's, that, that is a, that's a scary-ass situation-

Chris Williamson 41:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 41:24 ... as compared to, "Oh, we could be all sorts of kinds of friends and all sorts of kinds of enemies and we could be both," and which all exist in the world.

Chris Williamson 41:32 What about someone who feels like fear is running the show a lot in their life, that that's a, a very prevalent sort of emotion?

Joe Hudson 41:41 Yeah, there's a couple things that can create the fear. O- one of them is repressed excitement. One of them is, um, them not getting their actual needs met, and the other one is, uh, other emotions that they're, that they use, that they can't allow themselves to feel so they'll use, they'll use the fear. So oftentimes you'll see the last one with, um, that classic mom who's, like, using their worry to try to control everything, right? Like, "I'm so scared about your, you, you driving that four-wheel drive. Please don't do that." Or, "I'm scared about..." Like, "Be careful when you take that trip to Thailand," that-

Chris Williamson 42:14 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 42:14 ... whole thing. That's like... Is that fear or is them, that them not taking care of their needs or is it them not feeling empowered? What's the actual feeling that's, if, that if they could feel it, the fear might go away? And oftentimes that's excitement-

Chris Williamson 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 42:30 ... which is crazy. So there's a really cool hack. Take anything you're scared about. I would, I would ask you to do it, but I don't know, I don't know if it'd be good, but...... the, take anything you're scared about, um, and literally say out loud, "I'm excited," 10 times. "I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited." And the way that neurology is wired, it's they're very close to one another and so apparently, uh, it's, I mean, my ex- self-experimentation is it's like 90, 95% effective. I go from fear to excitement. And I think it's in the, I think it's in the Jewish tradition that they actually have two words for fear and one fear is like, "I'm scared of physical, like physical death," or like-

Chris Williamson 43:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 43:12 And the other one is, "I'm scared is I'm stepping into a bigger room. I'm stepping on stage."

Chris Williamson 43:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 43:18 "I'm, like I'm asked to do something to go to the next level." And so much of our fear in modern society is that second kind of fear.

Chris Williamson 43:25 Type two masquerading as type one.

Joe Hudson 43:26 Yeah. And so exactly. So if you actually allow the excitement, "Oh, I'm stepping into a bigger room."

Chris Williamson 43:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 43:34 Yeah. Like if I was scared coming in here, is am I, am I scared or am I just like super fucking excited?

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Chris Williamson 44:41 Rick Hanson has this really wonderful insight where he's talking about, uh, people fearing change.

Joe Hudson 44:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:46 So there's new things that are happening in life and, uh, one of them, one of the insights that he has there is the, not only is there a binary, so you guys agree on that. But he says, "Well, why do you assume that the change is going to be worse?" Right? Look back on most of the changes that happened in your life, most of the changes were better.

Joe Hudson 45:06 Yes.

Chris Williamson 45:07 Mo- most of the things, most of the times where there was a change it preceded an improvement. So he has this wonderful little maxim where he says, uh, "See yourself as the sort of person who can handle change well." Like, wow, I, I'm the sort of person that can handle change well, that change isn't some big scary threat, that it's not gonna cause some massive catastrophe for me. Huh. What if it's the choice isn't between this or worse but this but better?

Joe Hudson 45:35 Better.

Chris Williamson 45:36 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 45:36 Yeah. Or, or what if I just get excited over whatever the change is?

Chris Williamson 45:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 45:43 And I think that this, this is, yeah, this is one of the prevalent things. And it, and it's, and a lot of that has to do with the voice in the head because the voice in the head is constantly trying to, "Okay, you're gonna do this if this happens and this and this happens. And then make sure that this, if this everything..." Like they're calculating and you're playing three-dimensional chess.

Chris Williamson 46:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 46:01 And instead of, uh, like if you do that playing sports, you're gonna suck.

Chris Williamson 46:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 46:07 You know? If you're thinking instead of actually there playing the game, you're gonna suck. And so it's the same thing in life. Like all that pre-thinking often really slows down performance.

Chris Williamson 46:20 Yeah. That's an interesting one. For the, uh, perennial over-thinkers, uh, a lot of the time I think people have this sense that they're thinking about life and they're watching themselves experiencing it whilst not experiencing it.

Joe Hudson 46:33 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:33 The, the, you know what I mean? The- there's, there's this sort of they're, they're supposed to be playing Call of Duty first person but they're actually playing it third person.

Joe Hudson 46:41 Right.

Chris Williamson 46:41 And they're observing it happen and it's taking them out of the moment and they're thinking about the thing that they're experiencing-

Joe Hudson 46:47 Right.

Chris Williamson 46:47 ... which by design stops them from experiencing it.

Joe Hudson 46:50 They're trying to get it right which can't be gotten. Like there is no right to be gotten. So I'm gonna think about everything so that I make the right choice.

Chris Williamson 46:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 46:59 The right choice when? The right choice in two minutes? The right choice in four minutes? The right choice in two years? Like how many things that you did that were complete disasters led to you being here right now? Right? So there's no right choice. You can't even measure if the choice was right-

Chris Williamson 47:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 47:14 ... afterwards. But you spend literally 20 minutes trying to figure out, or 20 hours or 20 days trying to figure out-

Chris Williamson 47:21 Yeah. You say

Chris Williamson 47:22 choice, "There is no way of getting it perfect. There is no complete, no finish line, no done. There is simply what's the next experiment. There is only play."

Joe Hudson 47:30 Yeah. Yeah. So the, yeah, I, so- the way I think about that one is, uh, so when is an oak tree perfect? When it's an acorn? When it's like a sapling? When it's like 100 years old? When it's 200 years old? Like when is it perfect? But yet somehow or another we have to be perfect. It's not. It's just iteration. It's just, it's just evolution. Evolution doesn't end. The only thing that ends is an idea in our head and our egos. Egos can't exist. If you actually really understand that there is no end, the ego has to evaporate.

Chris Williamson 48:05 Say more on that.

Joe Hudson 48:07 (sighs) Right? So oftentimes the people who are searching for enlightenment, they think once they get the enlightenment then it'll be done. Right? That's just the ego talking. That's just, that's just, oh, there is gonna be this end point where then I'm gonna be happy. Like, that, that, that is an ego thought process so that they can, so you can whip yourself and beat yourself up to get to that place. And it is just a way to convince yourself that what you want can't be found right now.

Chris Williamson 48:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 48:35 So if I said to you right now, without going into the past, without going into the future, you can't find any evidence from the past or any evidence in the future-

Chris Williamson 48:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 48:44 ... find a problem with you. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:51 Yeah, that's funny.

Joe Hudson 48:51 Yeah, there is none. You can't find it. So, so you need an end because the other ex- the only other choice is to be in this moment, which is where the ego doesn't get to exist.

Chris Williamson 49:06 I wrote this quote from van Gogh this week in my newsletter that said, "If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now, for wheat is wheat even if people think it is grass in the beginning."

Joe Hudson 49:18 Oh, I like that. That's so- that's so fucking good.

Chris Williamson 49:21 The same thing you're talking about, right?

Joe Hudson 49:23 It is.

Chris Williamson 49:23 The acorn.

Joe Hudson 49:24 Okay, I'm gonna- I'm gonna- I'm-

Chris Williamson 49:25 "A wheat is wheat even if people think it is grass in the beginning."

Joe Hudson 49:27 I'm gonna geek out. Let me geek out for just a second. So today, I got a text from somebody who... a zen, uh, teacher that I know, and he was worried about AI, and, uh, and so found out that I'm working-

Chris Williamson 49:40 You're the guy to ask.

Joe Hudson 49:41 Yeah, apparently I'm- yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:42 Are they coming for my zen teaching?

Joe Hudson 49:44 Say again?

Chris Williamson 49:44 Are they coming for my zen teaching?

Joe Hudson 49:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:46 Tell me, Joe.

Joe Hudson 49:46 (laughs) Yep, and, uh, and my response was, um, just like everything, this river is gonna find the lowest ground, so where it's gonna end up is already determined. And it's the same thought process that you just said there. Like, even the action that I take and that all the people will take towards influencing AI, like, all of that is set in a- and fro- from that same kind of point of view. So, our job is the same. It's like, show up with love, do what you're called to do. You know, draw the boundaries, say the truth that you can see. And, but the whole idea of, like, I have to manage my entire world to get to the place is just-

Chris Williamson 50:31 Mm.

Joe Hudson 50:31 ... it's just a huge amount of stress. It's all self-talk.

Chris Williamson 50:36 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 50:36 Not real.

Chris Williamson 50:37 Again, to sort of fly the flag for the insecure overachievers out there, the, uh-

Joe Hudson 50:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:43 ... the, the desire for control-

Joe Hudson 50:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:45 ... you know, if I can prepare sufficiently well, if I can know every different permutation of every different outcome-

Joe Hudson 50:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:51 ... then I reduce down the play within the system so it's so precise, so that what I think is going to happen and what is going to happen end up being so tightly correlated that there's no variance at all. (sighs) Ah, okay, there we go. There's a bit of certainty. Isn't that nice?

Joe Hudson 51:10 Isn't that death?

Chris Williamson 51:11 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 51:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:14 Yeah, I want the- I want- I want this wholly under control and absolutely predictable existence.

Joe Hudson 51:19 Yeah. I mean, yeah, exa- uh, I think about this in a slightly different way, but the, there, there is no life without tension. A cell doesn't exist without tension. Your lungs don't exist without tension. They're-

Chris Williamson 51:32 A salad?

Joe Hudson 51:32 Cell. No, cell.

Chris Williamson 51:34 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 51:34 (laughs) A salad doesn't exist without tension.

Chris Williamson 51:40 (laughs) Dude, I had this vision i- I had this vision in my mind. I was like, "Why is he, has he got, like, bits of fucking-"

Joe Hudson 51:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:48 "... lettuce leaf hanging across a string?" I had the, like a tightrope walk, but it's just individual leaves of lettuce-

Joe Hudson 51:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:55 ... hanging over a salad bowl. Holy fuck.

Joe Hudson 51:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:58 Wow, yeah. Okay.

Joe Hudson 51:59 Okay.

Chris Williamson 52:00 Getting back to it-

Joe Hudson 52:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:00 ... a cell doesn't exist without tension.

Joe Hudson 52:02 Without tension, yeah, there's just... So life doesn't exist without tension, so the idea that you're gonna be at peace when there's no tension, the idea that you're gonna be at peace when you've narrowed everything s- down so that you don't have to actually feel that tension is death.

Chris Williamson 52:16 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 52:18 So you don't find peace by having no tension. You find peace by enjoying the tension, of welcoming the tension-

Chris Williamson 52:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 52:26 ... looking forward to the tension.

Chris Williamson 52:27 Is safety got anything to do with it here? Is there a degree of unsafety?

Joe Hudson 52:31 There is no safety. Safety is an illusion. What the fuck is safe? Like, we're sitting in the- like, we're in Austin, Texas in a cool thing. Like, yeah, it's pretty safe, but hurricane, earthquake, fire. There, like... Safety is just something that we like to pretend exists.

Chris Williamson 52:49 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Hudson 52:53 And it- and it also, like a form of death.

Chris Williamson 52:59 If it feels scary to say, it's important, if it feels scary to sc- to say, "Not saying it will hurt your connection," if it feels scarry to s- scary to say, "Not saying it prioritizes their imagined reaction over your truth" ...

Joe Hudson 53:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:14 Why?

Joe Hudson 53:15 What's a qu- wha- why? (laughs) Why?

Chris Williamson 53:16 Why?

Joe Hudson 53:17 Um, so I'm not scared to say things that aren't important to me and vulnerable to me. So I, I could qualify that and say, that quote, I could qualify that quote and say, "With an open heart." To say it with an open heart, but... And I think that would probably be more accurate. But, uh, if I'm s- if I'm scared to say it, it means that there's something important and it's something vulnerable.

Chris Williamson 53:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 53:44 If I am... if I say the important thing to you and I'm vulnerable with you, our connection deepens.

Chris Williamson 53:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 53:50 Always the case.

Chris Williamson 53:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 53:52 If I am not willing to say that, it means I'm scared of a reaction that you're gonna have from me, which means I'm prioritizing you more than I'm prioritizing my own needs.

Chris Williamson 54:02 Yes, yes.

Joe Hudson 54:04 I'm actually prioritizing my fear over our connection as well.

Chris Williamson 54:08 And over yourself.

Joe Hudson 54:08 And, yeah, and over myself, that's right.

Chris Williamson 54:11 So it's-

Joe Hudson 54:12 And so this is how I run my business. It's how we run our marriage. It's how every- it's like, and this prevents resentment. It, like, it's amazing. If, if I find something that doesn't feel right, I will speak to it. I might not speak to it right now. It might take a day.

Chris Williamson 54:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 54:25 Because I'm not gonna be heartless and, like, and not pay attention to the person or have compassion or empathy for where they're at, but I'm going to say the thing that's scary to say or the thing that's bothering me.

Chris Williamson 54:36 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 54:36 And, and, and my expectation with the 18 or so people in our organization is that they do the same thing. Like, that's a d- we tell them, "That's, that's the job. You gotta say the hard thing." We actually start our meetings with, "What's a scary thing you're not saying?"

Chris Williamson 54:49 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 54:51 ... because that's what keeps relationships clean, that's what keeps the problems at bay. That's, like, stepping into it instead of trying to avoid it.

Chris Williamson 55:01 It's, I was trying to think about the difference between, uh, selfish and selfless, and this is a third one that's not, that's not either of them. You, so, you're not being selfish because you're actually hurting yourself in it.

Joe Hudson 55:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:15 You're not being selfless because you're killing the connection. And like, what the fuck is this? Like-

Joe Hudson 55:19 And you're, and you're not trusting them.

Chris Williamson 55:20 Yeah. It's like, what is thi- it's not, you know?

Joe Hudson 55:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:22 It's one of those interesting-

Joe Hudson 55:24 Oh, that's cool.

Chris Williamson 55:24 ... situations where it's neither selfish nor selfless.

Joe Hudson 55:25 Selfish.

Chris Williamson 55:26 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Hudson 55:26 Oh, yeah. That's, that's really cool. Yeah, there's no, uh-

Chris Williamson 55:30 It's just distru- well, it's, I, it's actually, it's kind of, it's destructive to the self, and it's destructive to the other as well.

Joe Hudson 55:37 As well.

Chris Williamson 55:37 I guess that's one way to put it.

Joe Hudson 55:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:38 Right?

Joe Hudson 55:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:39 It's like, it's bad on all fronts.

Joe Hudson 55:40 Yeah. I remember having this moment where, so I, we did this in our company, and I was just like, "We, we do this. We're gonna, if something's upsetting anybody, we talk about it, and that's how we're doing it." And one day I came in to, and I was, the, the woman who I at the time worked with most closely, um, and she, her name's Sarah, she's ama- anybody who's worked in our, or done anything in our organization knows Sarah, she's amazing. And I walked in, I was, like, frustrated, I was like, "Ugh, gah." And she goes, "Oh, I'm so excited that you're frustrated." I was like, "What?" She goes, "Every time you're frustrated, it means that you're seeing something that we're not seeing, and we're gonna make a big improvement. So what is it?"

Chris Williamson 56:17 Mm.

Joe Hudson 56:18 Totally, like, changed the whole, like, my, the way I ha- hold my own frustration, it changed that. And then it also changed, like, how I, like, looked at the whole business because I was, "Oh, wow, this is really important."

Chris Williamson 56:33 It's like alchemy-

Joe Hudson 56:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:34 ... doing that.

Joe Hudson 56:35 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 56:37 So I had this conversa- I told you about this episode I did with Naval, which will be out by the time that people are listening to this, and hopefully many millions of people will have listened to it. And it, he, I came up with this idea having watched him.

Joe Hudson 56:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:48 And you, you haven't heard him speak but, uh, I, I'll try and explain it as best I can. He is, uh, patient zero for what you've just said there, that he, I've seen him at, uh, dinner parties, if we're partway through a conversation that he's just not interested in, he just gets up and walks over to another corner of the room. There's no airs or graces, uh, there's no sort of apologing, apologizing for him not being sufficiently entertained, "I must, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go, very much," there's no excuses and, uh, nothing else.

Joe Hudson 57:22 Yeah, lovely.

Chris Williamson 57:23 And I came up with this term of, like, holistic selfishness, uh, or a sort of integrated self-priority, whatever you wanna call it.

Joe Hudson 57:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:31 He's unapologetically prepared to put himself first, and he is not concerned about the discomfort that that causes in other people, or in himself actually.

Joe Hudson 57:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:44 And, um, I just wanted to sort of sit with that. It feels like a lot of what we've talked about at the moment is sort of self-prioritization. It's like, okay, uh, uh, not selfish prioritization but, um-

Joe Hudson 57:55 Correct.

Chris Williamson 57:55 ... deciding that your needs are legitimate, uh, uh, uh, uh, not subjugating your desires or, or the things that you want from the world because of a, a fear of them not being, uh, requited, or, or reciprocated, or received, or whatever, or retaliation for them.

Joe Hudson 58:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:10 Um, what, what would you say to the person who is unusually comfortable with deprioritizing their own needs, with not seeing their, their wants or their desires as legitimate, with, uh, regularly subjugating what it is that-

Joe Hudson 58:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:26 ... they, uh, would like to get from the world in place of not wanting to sort of upset the apple cart in that way?

Joe Hudson 58:33 Yeah, I would say, I would probably (laughs) start off saying something a little provocative like, "Wow, you're a really non-compassionate human being." So the, the, the reason I would say that, first of all, is selfishness generally is just something we were told we were when we weren't doing what our parents wanted us to do. So it was just basically our parents being selfish, and we weren't doing what they wanted, and they were like, "You're selfish," right?

Chris Williamson 58:56 That's a great take.

Joe Hudson 58:57 So that-

Chris Williamson 58:58 Great take.

Joe Hudson 58:58 So that's where selfishness generally comes from. The second thing is, let's say, let's bring God into it for a minute. If you believe that what's best for you ultimately, ultimately what's best for you, is not what's best for everybody else, then God is a sadist. God has set up a world where-

Chris Williamson 59:26 You have to make a trade.

Joe Hudson 59:27 ... you have to make a trade. And my experience, my experience is that when I am doing what's actually deeply right for me, I am doing what's deeply right for everybody.

Chris Williamson 59:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 59:37 Right? There's no, apologies, I thought that was off.

Chris Williamson 59:40 No, not at all.

Joe Hudson 59:41 Um, um, yeah, the, um-

Chris Williamson 59:48 Deeply right for me.

Joe Hudson 59:49 Yeah, deeply right for, deeply right for somebody else. So the, so my experience is that the compassionate act is often hard, sometimes easy, sometimes in the middle, but it's, it's the thing that is best for both you and for me. If I am not gonna be true, so for instance, the, uh, easiest way to look at this is, uh, do you want me to come to your party if I feel obligated to come to your party?

Chris Williamson 1:00:16 No.

Joe Hudson 1:00:16 Yeah. Exactly. I'm, I'm, I'm saying I can't be selfish, I have to go because I said I was gonna go-

Chris Williamson 1:00:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:00:25 ... but now I'm coming out of obligation. You don't fucking want me there if I'm obligated.

Chris Williamson 1:00:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:00:28 And that, if you really get in touch with, even in business, if you're like, "Oh, do I really, is the thing that's really best for me to get that extra 10% or w- the thing that's really best for me is having a really strong relationship, and having something that's equitable and feels good for everybody or feels equally bad for everybody?" It's just gonna be better. So compassion is often saying the really hard thing. It's saying, "I'm not interested in this conversation." And I cannot tell you how many friendships I developed because of that exact thing.

Chris Williamson 1:00:58 Mm.

Joe Hudson 1:00:58 I remember I was sitting there getting pitched by a guy once, and he was talking, at some point I was just like, "My entire body just constricted when you said that."... and he looked at me, he's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, my whole body just constricted because, uh, you just disconnected from me and, and tried to sell me instead of being a human with me."

Chris Williamson 1:01:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:01:17 And my, that relationship is, like, still strong to this day.

Chris Williamson 1:01:21 Over the span of about a year, I tried pretty much every green drink that I could find, trying to work out which one was best, and I came across AG1 and I've stuck with it for over three years, because it's the best. It's the most comprehensive, it's the most highly tested, and the most rigorously formulated. AG1 genuinely care about holistic health, which is why I've got my mom to use it, I've got my dad to use it, and tons of my friends as well. And if I found something better, I would switch, but I haven't, which is why I still use it. There is a 90-day money back guarantee, so if you're unsure about trying it, you can buy completely risk-free, try it for a full three-month period, and if you don't like it, they will give you your money back. So, if you want to replace your multivitamin and more, start with AG1. Right now you can get a year's free supply vitamin D3 and K2, five free AG1 travel packs, and a 90-day money back guarantee by going through the link in the description below or heading to DrinkAG1.com/modernwisdom. That's DrinkAG1.com/modernwisdom. This is, you know, when I tap into the, the best part of me, and I think it's the part of me that I hear when I listen to guys like yourself, Alain de Botton from The School of Life, uh, as much as he's, like, the least cool fucking guy on the internet, Sam Harris when he's at his best, I think, you know, he, he really sees this. And it is, it's this weird blend of sort of compassion, self-belief, uh, a f- firmness in your own principles, and like a, a hopefulness that if you ask for it, maybe the world will actually give you what you need. And, uh, I'm sure there's a million other things that are going on there too.

Joe Hudson 1:03:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:04 But that's kind of where it triangulates for me.

Joe Hudson 1:03:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:07 Uh, which is, huh, maybe if I just sort of say the truth in a way that's charming-

Joe Hudson 1:03:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:15 ... hopefully, and not unnecessarily-

Joe Hudson 1:03:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:18 ... uh, uh, sort of mean or, or, or passive or-

Joe Hudson 1:03:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:22 ... sort of wrapped in sugar or wrapped in spikes and poison. Huh, and maybe things will actually go really well if I do that.

Joe Hudson 1:03:30 It's the only thing, it's the only way things go really well. 'Cause if you're not being yourself, then the world you create is not for you.

Chris Williamson 1:03:39 That's great.

Joe Hudson 1:03:43 Y- y- like, okay, so I'm gonna not be me, and now the world is cre- I've created a world for not me.

Chris Williamson 1:03:49 And then I'm railing against the fact that this world doesn't seem to fit me.

Joe Hudson 1:03:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:53 I managed to get myself into this relationship with someone who seems to like me for a person that I'm not.

Joe Hudson 1:03:57 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:03:58 It's like, "Who have you been?"

Joe Hudson 1:04:00 Exa-

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 "Yeah, not me." It's like-

Joe Hudson 1:04:00 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:04:01 ... well, who the fuck did you think that we were gonna get into a relationship with then?

Joe Hudson 1:04:03 (laughs) Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Why is there resentment now? Well, that's why.

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 You can't be accepted for who you are if you're not showing up as who you are.

Joe Hudson 1:04:11 Yeah, that's right. So that's what he's doing. Uh, well, if he, I, I, I, I, it doesn't feel good in my system to walk away from a conversation without saying, "Hey, uh, um, goodbye," or something.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 Well, maybe he did. I do-

Joe Hudson 1:04:25 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 My, my point being the, uh, unnecessary overture of-

Joe Hudson 1:04:30 Correct.

Chris Williamson 1:04:30 ... like, "Oh, I'm, I'm ch- just do the thing." It's just like, dude, it's, you, you're not accepting an Academy Award. Fuck off.

Joe Hudson 1:04:36 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:37 (laughs) Like, like honestly, just go.

Joe Hudson 1:04:38 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:04:39 It's like, "Uh, I'm gonna go and see what's going on over there," or whatever.

Joe Hudson 1:04:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 Um, but yeah, the, that's so great that you need to, i- if you're not showing up the w- as who you are, what the fuck world do you think you're going to create?

Joe Hudson 1:04:51 Exactly, yeah. Yeah, the one that's built for the person that you think you should be, not the person you are.

Chris Williamson 1:05:02 Yeah, it's similar to-

Joe Hudson 1:05:04 The, the, the interesting thing, one thing I wanna say about that, the interesting thing is that, uh, it's, it, it creates an open heart. If you look at the people who live that way, my experiences, my experience of living that way is that, because you're accepting yourself, it's easy to accept other people. The more of yourself that you can accept, the more you can accept of others, the more kinds of people that you can accept. So there's that, there's also that reflection. So the people who live like that, our mind wants to say they're selfish and, and, and they're like, they're like hu- full of hubris and arrogance and blah, blah, blah. But when you actually meet those people, like if you've ever hung out with, like, a, a llama for like... That, that's how they act, operate. That's how they move in the world and they're ju- and they're completely dedicated-

Chris Williamson 1:05:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:05:51 ... to compassion.

Chris Williamson 1:05:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:05:53 And so it's-

Chris Williamson 1:05:53 But also not dedi- th- they're completely dedicated to non-pretense as well.

Joe Hudson 1:05:57 Self-compassion.

Chris Williamson 1:05:59 Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting that what we think we're doing, th- and it's, uh, like you said before, that we have this, uh, binary trade that we keep inside of our mind, which is either we can appease the world or we can appease ourselves.

Joe Hudson 1:06:13 Yeah, that's right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:14 This is the same thing going on here.

Joe Hudson 1:06:15 This is fear.

Chris Williamson 1:06:21 Why do you think it is that the, this equation, this odd, imbalanced equation of it can either be good for them-

Joe Hudson 1:06:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:28 ... or it can be good for me, but it can't be good for either. And if it's good for me, a lot of the time it's bad for them.

Joe Hudson 1:06:33 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:33 W- what's that, what's the-

Joe Hudson 1:06:35 Fear.

Chris Williamson 1:06:36 Okay.

Joe Hudson 1:06:36 Yeah. It's, uh, uh, so any time there's that binary, then there's a fear. In this particular case, it's a fear that was probably built at a very young age that was mom's gonna be happy with me, I have to abandon myself, or dad's gonna be happy with me and I have to abandon myself, or I don't abandon myself and I'm gonna get punished.

Chris Williamson 1:06:52 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:06:52 And that's, I think, where that typically comes from.

Chris Williamson 1:06:57 Just sit a little bit longer in the, this sort of bravery, you know, this, somebody listening who says, "Fuck, like, that's me. I compromise myself-"

Joe Hudson 1:07:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:06 "... all the time. I don't say what I mean. I do- I've done it so long that I don't even know what I mean to say anymore."

Joe Hudson 1:07:12 Don't even know what I need, don't know what I want.

Chris Williamson 1:07:14 "Yep, I've subjugated it under, you know, fucking layers and layers of, of sedimentary rock." Now, uh, how can someone start to show up more bravely in the world in that way, for themselves?

Joe Hudson 1:07:28 Yeah, the, um ... It ... So it's really about ... So this is where the emotions come in. So if you can imagine the emotion that you're gonna have to feel when you say the thing and you're gonna get rejected and you can live that experience and you can welcome that emotion, then there's nothing to be scared of.

Chris Williamson 1:07:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:07:49 Right? "Yep, they're gonna get mad at me. Okay. I felt that, I know what that's like. I'm gonna be there with them."

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 Mm.

Joe Hudson 1:07:57 I, I can, if, if ... The interesting thing is, you could get really mad at me and if I can stay an open heart, it's fucking not a problem at all. My job is to have people get mad at me. Like when we do our-

Chris Williamson 1:08:09 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 1:08:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:10 Yeah, I'm going away with you at the end of this year, or maybe I'll, maybe I will be getting mad at you at some point, I don't know.

Joe Hudson 1:08:14 I guarantee. And, and-

Chris Williamson 1:08:15 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 1:08:16 And I mean, if you look at my handle on Twitter, it's Fuck You Joe Hudson, it's F-U Joe Hudson.

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 Oh, right. I didn't know what that stood for.

Joe Hudson 1:08:22 It's because people, when I work with them-

Chris Williamson 1:08:24 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 1:08:24 ... often are like, "Fuck you," like that's their job. But if I'm sitting there with a big open heart, like it's, uh, my response typically is, "I love you too."

Chris Williamson 1:08:31 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 1:08:32 Because that anger is a, a vulnerability. That anger is a sh- they care. You don't get angry at shit you don't care about.

Chris Williamson 1:08:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:08:39 So it's like ... But if I get defensive, it's fucking hell on earth. If I get scared, it's hell on earth.

Chris Williamson 1:08:44 Mm.

Joe Hudson 1:08:45 So that's the, that's the thing. And all these relationships that people get into, it's amazing because they're all so scared of either breaking the other person or their anger.

Chris Williamson 1:09:00 Mm-hmm. Yeah, that someone's either too weak or too strong, basically, to take it.

Joe Hudson 1:09:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:06 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 1:09:06 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:09:08 Yeah. You cannot love fully unless you see that you are completely empowered. It is near impossible to love what you think oppresses you.

Joe Hudson 1:09:16 Yeah. Those are two different things.

Chris Williamson 1:09:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:09:19 So one is if you close your ... And I don't know if you wanna do this, but for the audience. If you close your eyes and you feel unconditional love for a minute, and then switch and then feel full empowerment, like you're Superman and there's no Kryptonite, you don't have to worry about the future. It, like you've got it. And then go back to unconditional love, and then go back to full empowerment, and then put them together, feel them both, that's what I mean. If you feel weak, if you v- well, not weak, isn't the right word. There's lots of ways of feeling weak that are great, but the ... If you feel like you don't have ... you're not empowered in the world, then you're not empowered to love fully.

Chris Williamson 1:10:19 Hm. Is that the job of you? Is that the job of the person that you're trying to love?

Joe Hudson 1:10:28 Oh, you're, you're totally responsible for your own. Your, the, your capacity to receive love and your capacity to give love often are pretty much highly, very highly correlated, and absolutely your responsibility. However, when you do that, what you notice is that all of a sudden you're surrounded by a lot of very loving people.

Chris Williamson 1:10:47 Well, it's, uh, like you said about the, the depth of relationship that you had with that person where you say, you made me, you said that thing and I tensed up-

Joe Hudson 1:10:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:55 ... in this way. As long as someone, mm, believes, uh, as long as it is true and someone believes that it's true, what you have there is an unusually reliable person. You have, you have somebody, it's like, "Oh, fuck. I, I can actually have faith that when this person says that this thing is good, that they actually mean it-"

Joe Hudson 1:11:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:15 "... and they're not just paying lip service to it or blowing smoke up my ass."

Joe Hudson 1:11:18 Yeah. You can't trust somebody who can't say no. You can't trust somebody who doesn't, who doesn't have conflict with you. That's the whole thing is like when you watch CEOs who are conflict avoidant, their, their companies become untrustworthy. They, nobody trusts each other in their companies. Trust is built-

Chris Williamson 1:11:35 It's obfuscation all the way down.

Joe Hudson 1:11:37 Yeah. 'Cause it, trust is built with you and I have conflict and we get through it and we're better on the other side.

Chris Williamson 1:11:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:11:42 It's why people who have been in war together have lifelong forever friendships, because they have a, like, deep trust that we will get through this shit together.

Chris Williamson 1:11:51 Mm-hmm. You had my back, I had yours.

Joe Hudson 1:11:53 Yeah. And same with a marriage, same with a relationship. If every conflict you have turns into some self-recognition, turns into some recognition of how you want to be different or, or some realization of yourself, then that relationship is solid. If every conflict doesn't get brought out, you don't know what's gonna happen, or it just turns into this yelling match that you throw underneath the, then under the rug, then you, that relationship will absolutely fall apart at some point.

Chris Williamson 1:12:21 There's a, a cool lesson, uh, about, uh, uh, I had this guy, Edward Slingerland on, he wrote a book called Trying Not To Try, which is about Wu Wei-

Joe Hudson 1:12:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:12:30 ... which you'll be familiar with.

Joe Hudson 1:12:31 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:31 And then he wrote another book about, uh, like the history of alcohol. And, um, he basically described alcohol as kind of the perfect drug for the human race. And in many ways he's right. And I'm, I used to be a club promoter, now I'm not a, really, really not a big drinker. I was like, "Eh, alcohol is rubbish," and blah, blah, blah. Um, but he explained it in a really interesting way, and one of the things that it turns out is that, um, when you're drunk or even tipsy, probably dr- tipsy rather than drunk, uh, you are worse as a liar because it shutdown some of your prefrontal cortex, but people are actually better liar detectors when they're tipsy. So if you have a room of people who are all tipsy-

Joe Hudson 1:13:10 That totally makes sense. That's something that you're describing like half the business meetings of my life.

Chris Williamson 1:13:14 What-

Joe Hudson 1:13:15 Not business meetings, but like business-

Chris Williamson 1:13:16 Tipsy. (laughs)

Joe Hudson 1:13:18 (laughs) "Ah, it's nine o'clock..." No, I'm meaning like every, when you're a venture capitalist, every evening when you're like, uh, uh, networking, everybody drinks together.

Chris Williamson 1:13:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:13:26 Like, it is a thing that you do.

Chris Williamson 1:13:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:13:29 And, and it, and it totally makes sense because it builds trust.

Chris Williamson 1:13:33 Yes.

Joe Hudson 1:13:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:33 Um, and one of the other things it does, you know, it, reliably, if you drink a lot, you're gonna suffer the next day. So there is a-... you look through history, uh, tradition of, uh, armies getting really, really drunk a few nights before the first battle. Now, there's also quite a few famous battles in which the, uh, guy in charge of the army has maybe mistimed that and they've woken up to be attacked the next day with a stinking hangover, which I imagine is probably the worst way. You can talk about long flights back from Vegas or whatever.

Joe Hudson 1:14:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14:00 It's like, dude, if you're not in mortal peril by a, a, a fucking Mongolian wielding a spear-

Joe Hudson 1:14:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14:05 ... like, there's, there's been worse places to do it. Um, and, uh, but what he talked about there was, uh, when you're, uh, drinking, there is, in the back of everybody's mind as you go through this, there is this sense of, yeah, this is fun now, but we all know we're gonna pay for it in the morning and you're still here with me. You're still doing it.

Joe Hudson 1:14:24 I love that thought process.

Chris Williamson 1:14:25 So the idea of getting drunk as a, a, we're gonna bond over the pleasure and then we're gonna bond over the pain-

Joe Hudson 1:14:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:14:32 ... as well.

Joe Hudson 1:14:33 And we're gonna share an experience that we're n- neither of us are going to be entirely proud of explaining to other people-

Chris Williamson 1:14:39 (laughs)

Joe Hudson 1:14:39 ... (laughs) the experience.

Chris Williamson 1:14:41 Yeah. You, you have this-

Joe Hudson 1:14:42 And so we have this thing on each other.

Chris Williamson 1:14:43 ... secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Hudson 1:14:44 Yeah. That's cool.

Chris Williamson 1:14:45 Yeah.

Joe Hudson 1:14:46 I love that.

Chris Williamson 1:14:46 Um,

Chris Williamson 1:14:47 there was another insight as well, which I, I fucking fell in love with this really, really great, um, essayist and he was talking about I think he calls it the divorce paradox, and he says, um, uh, many people are surprised by why couples who in public are seemingly so perfect end up splitting up, and it's because of a lesson that we haven't fully internalized in the modern world, which is, it is not the good times, but how you deal with the bad times that predicts the longevity in marriages. It's not how much fun and vibe you have when things are great, it's how well you move through rupture and repair and come back out on the other side.

Joe Hudson 1:15:21 That's absolutely it. Yeah. The, the, uh, uh, when I'm a- asked by people about, "Is this the right person for me?" My answer is almost always the same, which is two things. One, are they working on themselves and do they see the relationship as a way to work on themselves? Two is when you have conflict, how's the repair? And if you have those two things, it'll work out. It might not be pretty, (laughs) it might, it might be hardcore for a while, but it will work out.

Chris Williamson 1:15:51 Well, I kind of think about it like trading in a way, that, um, you know, your stock can move-

Joe Hudson 1:15:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:59 ... uh, intraday, intramonth, intrayear, it can move an awful lot, but as long as you don't bottom out, as long as you don't actually end up getting kicked out the bottom of your trade, you're like, "I'm still in the fucking market, baby."

Joe Hudson 1:16:09 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:16:10 Um, but if it decides to go to zero-

Joe Hudson 1:16:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:13 ... and that is a we, we actually can't do rupture and repair particularly well.

Joe Hudson 1:16:17 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:16:18 Uh, well, we can do rupture well, but we can't do repair well.

Joe Hudson 1:16:19 Right. Exactly. Yeah, and then, then it just turns to resentment, and then resentment to disdain, and then it's over.

Chris Williamson 1:16:24 Talk to me about resentment. Where does that come from?

Joe Hudson 1:16:27 Um, res- There's a couple things that typically in a relationship, one of the main ways resentment happens is that traditional, say, um, someone has the male role, the female role. The male role often is like, "Uh, my job is to try to make this person happy." That's gonna create resentment, just that action right there. "My job is to make this person happy." Because what you're saying is, "You can't make yourself happy. You need me." "Fuck you, I don't need you."

Chris Williamson 1:16:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Hudson 1:16:54 That's the underlying thing that's happening. So you'll see, oh, uh, you know, uh, the man is like, "Uh," and it happens both ways, don't get me wrong, but the man is like, "Oh, I need to... I need to duh-duh-duh-duh. Like, I've